The SEACRIFOG Dialogue Platform (SDP) is an advisory body providing strategic and policy-related guidance inclusively. The SDP will accompany the implementation of the SEACRIFOG project into an infrastructure for GHG observations on the African continent. Future objectives and roadmaps will be set, and long-term funding strategies sought and discussed. Other key objectives of the platform are to ensure the translation of GHG observation data into science in interoperable ways in order to impact society economically and politically. The platform will allow for continuous review of processes throughout the lifetime of the infrastructure.

Membership

Membership to the SDP will remain open to evolve according to changing needs during the growth of the research infrastructure, providing a forum for high-level stakeholders from Europe and Africa, particularly taking into account societal players closer to the grassroots such as entrepreneurs and/or farmers. The members of the SDP are senior managers or high-level executives from European and African organizations representing the major stakeholders to the project: regional or global multilateral organizations, research institutions, local and national governments and actors in the fields of earth observation, agriculture food security.

1st virtual meeting of the SDP 2020, date tbc.

For this 1st meeting, a session is intended to present project technical achievements, to seek current and future participants needs and interests and to discuss impact and sustainability. The participants will analyse results achieved so far in relation to initial project policy goals and objectives. With regards to the future roadmaps, participants, depending on their needs, will maintain, improve or change initial project objectives and goals. The aim is to set a future agenda for research and innovation and human and institutional capacity building for the RI at onset. These agendas will be set through pathways that will relate expected impact to expected outcome and output. Monitoring and evaluation criteria will also be discussed at this initial stage, in parallel to the impact pathways setting exercise so that stakeholders are able to monitor future RI activity. A theory of change and impact pathway methodology will be applied and tested in this first meeting while a long-term perspective Project Innovation and Management Cycle will be tested throughout the lifetime of the RI. They consider the aforementioned strategies for management for sustainable impact. These frameworks are currently used in the context of European Union and African Union research cooperation in Science Technology and Innovation, in the climate change and food and nutrition and sustainable agriculture partnerships; in the LEAPAGRI, LEAP4FNSSA and upcoming LEAP-RE projects.

Given the circumstances today in Europe as well as in Africa, it would be unwise to maintain travel plans despite ongoing COVID-19 transmission. We hope that the situation changes soon. Nevertheless, the time needed for logistics would not allow to plan for a physical meeting before end of project this year. We plan however to hold a virtual meeting, given the importance of what was to be the 1st SEACRIFOG Dialogue Platform meeting. We still hope to keep highlights of the agenda; to show results of the project and to find a common way forward for a possible pan-african infrastructure for GHG observations.Contact